'Pink plateau' blocks path to top for gay executives

It's called the "pink plateau". It's the glass ceiling that makes gay men and lesbians virtually invisible in the boardrooms of global multinationals.

Homophobia may be withering in offices and on the shopfloor but among Britain's business elite the closet remains firmly shut. At the global oil majors, routinely negotiating deals in countries not known for their tolerance of homosexuality, being openly gay is simply not an option.

"There still isn't a single openly gay person running a FTSE 100 company in Britain," said Ben Summerskill, chief executive of lobbying group Stonewall.

A recent survey of the country's top 100 most influential gay and lesbian people named only three chief executives willing to have their names published, led by Sir Michael Bishop, head of the airline BMI.

Mission statements embracing equality appear to apply to employees, not directors. Even among the top gay-friendly employers celebrated in Stonewall's annual Workplace Equality Index, only seven had an openly gay member on their board of directors or in senior management.

"If you look at figures such as Sir Michael Bishop or [Labour Lord] Waheed Alli, the one thing that makes them stand out is that they did it by themselves. Successful business people who are gay or from ethnic minorities are disproportionately self-made entrepreneurs. That's because they don't see career progression within a conventional corporate structure," said Mr Summerskill.

Neither BP or Shell appear in Stonewall's index, nor any of the global mining companies that make up a large part of the FTSE 100.

BP has its headquarters in London and its gay workers are protected by UK anti-discrimination legislation. Recently, it even formalised an internal network for gay staff. But its global operations put openly homosexual staff climbing the corporate ladder in an invidious position. The career path inside a multinational oil company follows a route through the world's petroleum production centres, taking in the Middle East, Russia and sub-Saharan Africa, locations where homosexuality is at best socially unacceptable and at worst punishable by death. BP's roots are in Iran, which has executed thousands of gay men since the Islamic revolution.

Oil industry executives say that while Lord Browne's homosexuality was "an open secret," his decision to keep it out of the public glare was understandable. His job was to hammer out multibillion-pound deals with the likes of Colonel Gadafy of Libya and President Putin of Russia. Libya punishes homosexuality with five years in jail; in Russia it was recently decriminalised and removed from the list of mental disorders.

One senior male gay oil executive, who did not wish to be named, said yesterday: "It's still a very macho environment. Oil companies will 'manage' your career, sending you to various locations around the world and if it's a choice between a white heterosexual male and someone else, you'll lose out. There are always issues about the culture in overseas locations and whether you'll be accepted.

"This is also an industry where a lot of business takes place outside the office workplace; in people's home, hotels and so on. If you're gay, you're not going to be invited into the inner sanctum. In my last company I was, pointedly, never invited to the Christmas dinner for senior executives and their wives."

But he said there were signs of improvement. "I know of postings recently where a man and his male partner have been sent out to countries in Asia by the company. There's more of a pragmatic approach."